Thursday, October 25, 2012

Get Real Actionable Insights From Real-Time Social Data

About the Author: CEO/Founder of Nuvento ( a technology firm
that specializes in Business Intelligence and Software Architecture.)

I often come across many business enterprises that have accepted and adopted social media as a vital tool to achieve organizational success. However, with the ever-growing social data (1.3 billion active users on social networks and 3.2 billion posts and comments posted on Facebook on an average every day1) I think most organizations are still grappling with the influx of social data.

To me, the challenge here is – making good use of the extracted data. Simply monitoring the social media will only give an organization an overview of its social reputation. So, how can you get real actionable insights from real-time social data?

Here’s my four-step process to achieve this –1) Understand The Buzz Around Your Brand You shouldn’t just track the number of likes or shares that your brand received on your social pages, but understand who liked your brand and why. Analyzing the words used to refer to your brand and drawing inferences from it will help you know what qualities and values your brand stands for in the social sphere and based on this data, take actions to enhance your brand’s personality.

2) Measure How Effective Your Content Is Use your social data to understand how well your brand content – ad copy in advertising, taglines, jingles, TV videos, website content, blogs or even the brand ambassador’s look – was engaging enough for your customers or not. Turkey’s Akbank did just that. When it realized the need to explain the banking processes in simple terms, it introduced social games to make banking a fun experience for their prospects. Now, that’s what I call developing tailor-made content to suit the needs of your audience.

3) Make Improvisations And Innovations To ProductsSince, social conversations are full of purchase suggestions, product feedback and recommendations(Facebook is the most popular site to share online purchases - 55%, followed by Twitter -22%, Pinterest -14%), I think organizations must pay more attention to those social data that talk about your and your competitor’s products or servicesand understand the customers’ experiences while using your products. Then, usethese insights to make upgradations and improvements to your product and services according to the expectations of your customers.

4) Recognize What Your Customer WantsI don’t think customers’ social data is not limited to demographics alone. It provides insights on customers’ brand affinity, buying habits and spending trends. Also, social data indicates individuals’ needs and intents. So, using intent analysis tools, businesses can identify new target audience, reach out to them and convert them into new customers.

For example, ICICI Bank, India is offering basic services like account balances, transaction history, cheque book enquiries etc from its Facebook applications3 for their large number of their internet savvy customers.

In my opinion, business enterprises can successfully leverage and optimize all areas of their operations using the above four methods of social data usage. Our product, Shout Analytics is a high-caliber social media analysis tool that with some of its cutting edge features like sentiment analysis, I Intent analysis, and competitor analysis enables organizations to use the power of social media to understand, monitor and engage with its customers. To know more about Shout Analytics, write to us at info@shoutanalytics.com